I know exactly where I went wrong, and I think I can move on from it in a positive light.

I was always a chubby girl. So many people told me 'it's puppy fat, when you get older and grow it will level out'

When I went to High School all my problems began. I was bullied due to my weight constantly (teens are cruel) so I started a terrible habbit where I refused to eat while at school, in front of others. So i'd go from roughly 8am from when I left home to 4pm when I returned. Starving of course! I would gorge on snacky crap until mum called me for dinner.

Why is food an emotional comfort?

I do worry though that due to my 'emotional eating habbits' in the past that once I have completed cd, when times are hard I could revert to my emotional eating.

I wonder whether the hypnotherapy works? Has anyone had it? I believe to change habbits of a lifetime, extra help is needed.

We all know what a healthy lifestyle and eating is, but yet we fail to carry it out.

I have been considering cognitive therapy (which i'm told is a way of changing thought patterns)

Or am I just a sucker for adverts, and actually hypnotherapy and cognitive therapies are actually a big waste of money and time?

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I was very similar to you as well! My puppy fat took until I was 32 years to go ;-)

When I got to goal weight I had a breakdown as I was desperate to stay slim but also I used to use food for emotional benefit so much that I felt like I was in a pressure cooker and eventually I exploded.

My advice therefore is to seek help in whatever form suits you best, you are the expert of you and therefore if you think CBT will help you move on from the past then GO FOR IT!

For me it was when I let go of the past, looked to the future but lived in the present that I finally found I don't abuse food anymore and therefore I have not dieted in over 3 years now as I don't need to.

M.

​

Cambridge Diet New Counsellor Of The Year 2006​

Cambridge Diet Maintainer Of The Year 2009​

Lost Just Under 12 Stone On LighterLife/Cambridge Diet back in 2005 and have now been slim since. I haven't dieted at all since March 2006 !! WOOHOOO!!! Check out my blog at www.thedietguy.co.uk​

I remember my mum always telling me I was fat so I never really restricted what I ate as I thought 'it doesn't matter now, I'm fat anyway'. When I think back, I can remember being 10 stones with a 28" waist (I'm tall) so there was no way I was overweight.
Wish I had appreciated it then............

hey i think Icemoose has the right idea, i to have spent most of my life being big, I currently am doing this diet with my mum having terminal cancer and have had times when things have been so bad, i could have ate the fridge and not just the contents in it, but through this diet i have realised that it was emotions that wanted me to do this, hypnotherapy is expensive but so is this diet and as my husband often says to me "if you think it might help then dont worry about the cost, you cant pin a price on your health, or you mental state" I to also had a break down some years ago, I was on medication and had to see a counsellor, also I had to learn to do relaxation techniquics, I learnt alot about myself and how I need to think about me and not so much about others and have carried that thought with me since. You do what you think is right and if i helps you go for it girlie.

I too, was a chubby child, a fat teen and an obese adult...
I was bullied at school, in the work place and also in my private life.
For me the great thing with CD, is that we can choose this time without food to do lot's of soul searching and work on our problems. I am positive that weight problems are rarely anything to do with food... food is just the instrument we use to damage ourselves.
So many of us will be aware of being 'treated' as children with sweets for being good, or chastised for being naughty by having those 'treats' removed. Food is so ingrained into us as an emotional button.
As Mike said (and he is one person who has been so instrumental in the way I think) None of us can change the past, we can look back and beat ourselves up about things we have done, but nothing will change. Looking to the future is great as we can look forward to things that we can do, but once again, unless we are in a position to do something now, we can only make loose plans,
The important thing is what we do now, each minute of our present...

As for Hypnotherapy, it works without a doubt!
I am a hypnotherapist and I know it works!
The thing is, many people beleive it is something that it is not!
Hypnotherapy, is a tool for helping to 'reprogramme' the subconscious mind, it does not and can not make you 'do' anything....
I always explain it as, the mind works on 2 levels the conscious mind which is the instant decision making mind, and the subconscious mind where all the memories etc reside, it is the subconscious mind that delivers information to the conscious mind to allow it to make decisions...
The subconscious mind has no reasoning power at all!!!
So for instance if you have been bitten by a dog, and it was a traumatic experience, your sunbconsious mind might store that memory as "Dogs = Vicious/ unpleasant/ dangerous"
If you are in an abusive relationship where an abuser constantly tells you they love you, but also treat you appallingly... your subconscious might store " Love = controlling behaviour/ abuse"

This might be why phobias begin and why some people go from one abusive relationship to another or maybe become an abuser....

The thing is, with hypnotherapy, you can work with a person to unravel some of the irrational information that is stored, and replace it with logical / correct information...
Hence it can be used to undo some of the ways in which a person reacts to certain triggers such as food etc

Just one other thing about hypnotherapy, is that it isn't a quick fix.... subconscious thought doesn't appear over night and it can take weeks or months to change thought pattern...
If you want to go to a hypnotherapist, make sure you can build a rapport, and understand that if they offer you a one off session, they are not going to help much!!

Anyway... am sure there are others on here who are also hypnotherapists and maybe their advice will differ slightly... But make sure you get recommendation...
xx

Like the others, I can relate to what you're saying. I haven't taken the CD step lightly, but I knew that doing the diet wasn't really the biggest issue. In many respects, I feel that losing the weight is the easy bit. The hard bit will be maintaining and not finding myself back here in a few years time having to restart as I've put some or all of the weight back on.

I'm an intelligent woman and I know exactly what it takes to lose weight and keep it off, so my question to myself was 'why don't I do it then?' As part of my weight loss journey, I've taken 2 parallel roads. One is doing CD and dealing with the physical side of my obesity and the second is that I'm seeing a counsellor to explore where the psychological block is so that all the effort I'm putting into losing the weight won't be undone the second I'm not 'dieting'. Now, maybe I'll get to the end of my counselling journey and discover that I'm a lazy so and so who just doesn't apply herself to maintaining a healthy weight. But maybe I'll discover some things about me that I haven't wanted to deal with before. I'm at the very early stages of this, so will have to wait and see.

But whatever the result, I'll know I've given this my best shot and really, that's all we can do as human beings.

Emma, you need to do whatever feels right for you. If you think you're sucked in by the adverts etc, then in my book, that means you're not sure and it'd be good to dip your toe in the water and see what you think. That way you'll be making an informed choice and that's the best kind of choice to make!

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